GDC may be over, but there's still the clean up operation to be performed. Discarded bits of news lay strewn across the show's floor, waiting for us to scoop them up and put them on their digital shelf. What's that in the corner? A burnt-out mechanical husk - misshapen and trampled by excited IGF nominees - informing us that Nvidia's APEX demo featured a Hawken map that utilised the destruction tech in multiplayer. Let's scan it's sparking memory banks to see if... yes! A video!
Hawken makes sense as the showcase for multiplayer destruction. It does, after all, feature mechs - giant, full of missiles and about as elegant as a toddler. Nvidia provide us with the science bit, saying the level uses "GPU Rigid Bodies (GRB's) with networking support for the best multiplayer game experience. The level provides totally new game play - you can open new pathways or destroy the ground underneath the mechs."
That's all great Nvidia, and certainly a more practical application of the tech than your other tool of mass destruction. But two questions remain: 1) When exactly is this going to make it into the game? 2) How many loans will we need to take out in order to afford a card that can play it smoothly?
